Writing this introduction is a labor of love for me. You know how women sometimes say to each other "This dress is you!"? Well, this book is me!
This was the first book on economics that just jumped out and grabbed
me. I had read a few before, but they were boring. Very boring. Did I
mention boring? In sharp contrast, Economics in One Lesson grabbed me by the neck and never ever let me go.

[...]

There is nothing that pleases a teacher more than when that expression
of understanding lights up a student's face. The cartoons depict this
phenomenon in the form of a light bulb appearing right above the
depiction of the character. Well, let me tell you: I have gotten more
"ahas" out of introductory students who have read this book than from
any other. I warrant that there have been more conversions to the
free-market philosophy from this one economics book than, perhaps, from
all others put together. It is just that stupendous.

Hazlitt doesn't recognize any of these ifs. And that is what makes his book very dangerous indeed to a beginner in economics, because the ifs
are, all of them, important qualifications and caveats. I gather that
Tyler read it relatively early, and I am amazed that he has escaped
with so little permanent neurological and ideological damage.

If I know Walter, he'll be delighted to confirm Brad's fears - and frankly, I largely take Walter's side on this. Brad's worried that people will ignore the ifs; I'm worried that people won't understand that the ifs themselves require "important qualifications and caveats." As I write in my book:

Even
among economists, market-oriented policy prescriptions are often seen as too
dogmatic, too unwilling to take the flaws of the free market into account. Many prefer a more "sophisticated"
position: Since we have already belabored the advantages of markets, let us not
forget to emphasize the benefits of government intervention.I claim that the qualification needs qualification:
Before we emphasize the benefits of government intervention, let us distinguish
intervention designed by a well-intentioned economist from intervention that
appeals to non-economists, and reflect that the latter predominate.You do not have to be dogmatic to take a
staunchly pro-market position.You just
have to notice that the "sophisticated" emphasis on the benefits of
intervention mistakes theoretical possibility for empirical likelihood.

Under the circumstances, it's usually best to teach Hazlitt "straight" to intro students - not, contra Levy, as a "noble lie," but as a solid first approximation to economic truth.

Another example of how economists often know less about the economy than do non-economists.

Bryan wrote:

"You do not have to be dogmatic to take a staunchly pro-market position. You just have to notice that the "sophisticated" emphasis on the benefits of intervention mistakes theoretical possibility for empirical likelihood."

When I read this book for the first time I got the feeling that it captured the dirty little secret that was not in my textbooks. The world makes more sense in Hazlitt than in the stylized context of "ifs" found there.

I get a similar feeling feeling when reading Caplan. Some good sense is just too hard to ignore.

For all the flaws that can be pointed out in writing, the deep insights make it worth while to continue the search. Hazlitt is full of such motivation.

I agree with about 85% of Economics in One Lesson ideologically - I disagree with much more of it academically too - but I think Delong misunderstands the purpose of the book. I don't think this book was meant to be anything more than ideological. After all, Hazlitt and much of the new "Austrian school" isn't really made up of Delong's type of economist - if it isn't an introductory economist at the Mises Institute, it's a historical one or an amateur. I don't see any reason to expect much more from Hazlitt's book than what is offered.

I think something the "Austrians" are successful at is painting ideology as economics, which is actually good. After all, outside of public policy - which I think is wasteful, like all government work - what do you economists actually do? If you're an economics major, you're either going to work for the government or the fed, sometimes you'll work for companies, but only if you're an applied business economist. All of this political economy stuff, which is what Hazlitt's book focuses on, is just rubbish that happens to exist and probably wouldn't if there were no policy to publish.

I prefer the term "heuristic" over "dogma". I personally believe that institutions formed by consenting parties are more likely to serve the interests of those parties than institutions imposed on them by a third (government) party. I haven't seen, read, or heard anything in economics that would make me seriously reconsider this heuristic. I don't find this stance dogmatic.

Most policy recommendations by economists seems besides the point to me. Comparing a free market to a market with certain political interventions is already assuming the answer to a very important question that is rarely asked and even more rarely answered: can political processes improve market conditions more rapidly than markets can improve themselves? Markets and politics are mutually-exclusive processes which produce outcomes. Comparing one of those process to an outcome of another is like comparing the taste of peanut butter to the color purple. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

This year for Christmas I got all my friends copies of Nariman Behraves's book Spin-Free Economics. Now that I've read DeLong's warnings about how dangerous One Lesson is, I'm kicking myself that I didn't give that to people instead.

Clearly, you live in some sort of bubble world where Mises, Hayek and Rothbard didn't spend years pointing out that all the math in the world (as used by mainstream economists) can still be used to diguise ideological assumptions. So if you're Austrian economists ideological, and saying the mainstream is not, you are either ignorant or yourself ideologically motivated, or both.

Hayek was not really all that opposed to mathematics. I don't know about Mises, I think he could be somewhat whacked too, on occasions.

Rothbard simply frightens me, and that is coming from an Anarchist who used to adore him.

No one said that mainstream economics was not ideological either. I said that the "Austrians" were more dogmatists than economists. Subsequently they have become pretty good at spreading their dogma around the web.

I think that's a better strategy for them than the opposite, honestly. It is ideology and emotion, not facts and science that move the world.

the "sophisticated" emphasis on the benefits of intervention mistakes theoretical possibility for empirical likelihood.

Where have I heard that before?

"It is not sufficient to contrast the imperfect adjustments of unfettered enterprise with the best adjustment that economists in their studies can imagine. For we cannot expect that any State authority will attain or will ever wholeheartedly seek that ideal. Such authorities are liable alike to ignorance to sectional pressure and to personal corruption by private interest." — Pigou A. Wealth and Welfare 1920 p. 296

And of course, the very idea of "market failure" is a gross logical fallacy hidden behind the hocus-pocus of mathematical formulae, for it necessarily involves the possibility of a certain, guaranteed profit and of interpersonal comparisons of utilities as well as a denial of property rights without which no utility maximization is even thinkable : not one, not two but three essential contradictions.

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